Lawyer Turned Novelist
He was a lawyer turned reporter turned lawyer turned novelist turned reporter turned columnist turned crusader turned... well, you get the picture.
Jerry Tallmer, a couple of years ago, had a piece, “The Many Lives of Sidney Zion” that captured him as well as possible.
“There were – and are, to this minute – a large number of other Sidney Zions, well befitting Sidney’s own large, joyous, explosive physical self. There is Sidney the lawyer, Sidney the reporter, Sidney the columnist, Sidney the sometime magazine editor, Sidney the novelist, Sidney the Roy Cohn autobiographer, Sidney the diehard New York Giants football nut, Sidney the jazz and Sinatra and Tony Bennett and any other uncrapped-up-music nut, Sidney the enthusiast of good food and good drink, Sidney the restaurateur (as owner/host — briefly, in the early 1980s — of Broadway Joe’s on 46th Street’s Restaurant Row), Sidney the smoke-wreathed scorner of the Smoke Fascists, Sidney the man-about-town habitué of Gallagher’s, Elaine’s. the Players’ Club, the Yale Club, etc., Sidney the possessor of a fine eye for female grace in any form, Sidney the to-the-death partisan of embattled Israel, Sidney the equal-opportunity pomposity piercer, Sidney the anecdotalist, Sidney the inside-story truth-teller – and, of course, Sidney Zion, husband, father, grandfather, widower, bitter-end crusader for medical and hospital reform.”
Sid was so good that years after he left The New York Times, where he had been a legal affairs writer, Nat Hentoff, writing in the Village Voice, said:
“Sidney E Zion’s departure from the New York Times sone years ago was a laoss to that institution comparable in importance to that earlier occasion, once memorialized in song, of Cootie Williams leaving the Duke. Cooti came back. Sid — alas for the Times — has not.
“It was impossible to replace Cootie. No one has a sound or style like his. And the Times has never been able to replace Sid Zion. No reporter there combines a steaming skepticism, especially as addressed to members of the judiciary and Congress; his ebullient but lashing wit, and his unabashed passion to protect the constitution from its ever-present hordes of enemies.”
Loses Cancer Battle
Zion, who died two weeks ago at 75 after losing a battle to cancer, thought of himself as Runyonesque only better. Much better.
Sitting in Elaine’s or Gallagher’s, Sid could, and often would, spend hours telling stories filled with characters that put Runyon to shame if only because they were real.
He would tell you about editors who didn’t understand a big story, lawyers who didn’t understand justice and politicians who forgot about the people who elected them in the first place.
The only place where the comparison would sort of fall short was when it came to fiction. Sid’s novels were fun but not didn’t necessarily hold up from beginning to end. But, then again, neither do Runyon’s so, whatever.
Learning to Laugh Again
While many people may not know Sid’s name, they should because of the story he was most personally involved with — the story of his daughter who died in 1984, when she was just 18.
One night, she was brought to New York Hospital with a very high fever. Eight hours later, her care totally botched by a sleep-deprived doctor, she was dead. Sid and his wife Elsa (who died the same day 21 years later) sued.
The grand jury report in the case led to reforms mandating that residents are not allowed to work 24 hours in a row or more than 80 hours in a week. And while it’s not clear those rules are actually followed all the time, it’s good to know the rules are there.
One afternoon at Gallagher’s, after some press conference or something and stayed, he talked about how, after Libby died, he thought he would never laugh again.
“At some point you realize you’re still alive,” he said. “You start working again, living your life and, eventually, you remember how to laugh.”
Good advice.
